Critical Essay by John Ackerman

In the following essay, Ackerman explores the influence of Thomas's World War II experiences on his poetry collection Deaths and Entrances.

Deaths and Entrances was published in 1946, and the title of the volume is taken, of course, from Donne's sermon Deaths Duell: ‘Our very birth and entrance into this life, is … an issue from death.’1 The poems in this collection show a notable advance in sympathy and understanding due, in part, to the impact of war. Also, in the later poems he writes generally in a mood of reconciliation and acceptance, having outgrown the earlier rebellious and blasphemous attitudes of the enfant terrible. By this time, particularly in such poems as ‘A...